Filtering by Category: In the recording studio

I spent today recording drums and bass with the Callum Chenowyth Band for an upcoming album. The band had recorded guide tracks in their home studio and brought stereo music mixes to import into Pro tools.

Tom, the drummer set up his Pearl Reference kit. It sounded great in the room right away so we started to set up microphones. The bass drum had an interesting configuration of ports - there were 3 small holes rather than one large one. Usually I like to get the mic inside the drum quite close to the beater but with the smaller hole it wasn't possible. I angled a Sennheiser 421 up inside pointing to where the beater makes contact with the batter head. It actually sounded great right off the bat running through the Neve 8024 channel strip. I boosted a little at 50Hz and cut a little at 300Hz et voila!

We ended up with SE RN17's as overheads in a spaced pair, SM57 snare top and Beyerdynamic M201 on snare bottom. AGK 414's went on the toms with the Audix D6 on the outside of the kick.

For the room microphones I've been using a mid-side stereo pair. Today we used the Peluso 2247 in figure 8 mode for the sides and a Shure KSM141 as the 'mid'. The advantage of this technique is that there are no phase issues between the mics and you can vary the width of the stereo image by blending more or less of the side mic into the mix.

We have Kim Killspeed in the studio this evening recording some guitar parts for their next EP. Kim Killspeed are a local Sydney band who recorded and mixed their first EP here at Everland too. Andy, from the band is a bit of a guitar obsessive and has some nice Tele's that we often use. He also collects amps and has an original Fender Champ from the 50's. These amps are super-basic with just a volume control and a tone knob. They record really well, and they are only 5W!

When recording guitars I'll often use a two microphone setup, pairing a dynamic (such as a Shure SM57) with a condenser (like an AKG C414). You have to be careful to get the phase relationship between the two microphones correct but a blend can often give a fuller sound than recording with one microphone on it's own.

So, I've just spent seven days in the studio with Good Counsel. It's been a great experience. We recorded and mixed six songs, which will be released in the form of singles and an EP.

Six songs in seven days might seem like a lot but when the band has done as much pre-production as these guys did, recording is a very smooth process. The guys arrived with Pro Tools sessions for each track with all the parts and arrangements mapped out. We set up to record drums, bass and piano live and used the pre-production demos as guides for the guitars and vocals. Once the drums and bass were completed at the end of the first day, we proceeded to overdub guitar and synth parts and finished with vocals.

That left us 4 days for the mix. We did a lot of work to get the sounds as right as possible during the recording process so it was often just a case of pushing up the faders and with a touch of high pass filter and that was it.

Overall it was a great experience to work with a band that has such a strong vision for their sound.

Castlecomer are a Sydney 5-piece who have been in the process of writing songs for a forthcoming album. They've been into Everland three times over the last six months to record demos for these songs.

Demos can be a great way for a band to hear what is working and what isn't outside of the context of a rehearsal room. Demo recording is a slightly more quick and dirty process than setting up for a full session. For example we may only use 4 mics on the drum kit - kick, snare, and two overheads. The bass will likely be DI'ed only. Vocals can be sung live into a '58 in the control room. The band will usually run through two to three takes of each song and choose the best take of each to take away with them. In this particular case, rather than mixing the demo I provided the band with raw audio files for each instrument so they were able to experiment with arrangements in their DAW at home.